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  • Hi, I’m John Green. Welcome to my salon. This is Mental Floss on YouTube, and did you

  • know that before dating apps and social media helped usher a romance along, people used

  • all kinds of terrible techniques to alert their crushes. Like in 19th century Austria,

  • women would put an apple slice under their arms during a town dance, and if they fancied

  • a boy, they’d hand the apple to him. If he liked her back, he’d eat it.

  • I prefer swiping right, all things being equal.

  • But at least the apple action was straightforward: Victorian men had to memorize a whole slew

  • of signals to know whether or not to approach a woman. If a woman put her fan on her left

  • cheek, it meant she wasn’t interested. If she fanned herself slowly, she was spoken

  • for. Fanning quickly meant she’s on the market. And fan on the right cheek? She just

  • might like you. Or she’s blocking the sun from her face. One or the other.

  • Thankfully, today we have air conditioning. And also Tinder.

  • And those are just two of the many ways technology has made our lives ridiculously better that

  • I’m going to share with you today in this video, sponsored by out friends at Intel.

  • So these days getting the time is as simple as looking at your cell phone, but of course

  • that wasn't always the case. Back in the 19th century, merchants in London would literally

  • buy the time from a woman named Ruth Belville. Belville would visit the Greenwich Observatory

  • every morning to set a chronometer to the exact time, accurate to within one-tenth of

  • a second. And then she’d hop on a train and sell the correct time to clockmakers,

  • who could check their time against hers for a price. And then when the Standard Time Company

  • tried to run a smear campaign against Belville, it only increased her sales! Sounds like they

  • had a little bit too much TIME on their hands.

  • So of course now we can all brew coffee at home -- although we choose not to, going to

  • cafes instead. But back in the early 20th century, the beverage was often dusgusting

  • because people had no good way to filter out the grounds. In fact, before a German woman

  • invented coffee filters in 1908, people had ridiculous methods for getting rid of the

  • grounds. Like some people added pieces of salted cod to the coffee. In theory, the gelatin

  • would help coagulate the grounds so they would sink to the bottom of the cup. But in practice,

  • adding a piece of salted flesh to your drink results in like disgusting, fish-flavored

  • coffee. It was just like this.

  • Back in the 19th century, there was quite a large business for art forgers who wanted

  • to hawk fake masterpieces. And art critics used to authenticate paintings by looking

  • at how the ears, or the eyes, or the fingernails were shaped because those are the things that

  • are difficult for artists, the tiny details and stylistic habits. But these days, we can

  • use algorithms to analyze paintings for authenticity or imaging to analyze the cracks in a painting

  • that create a topographic map of the paintingssurfaces and show whether the paint would

  • have cracked that way over 50 years, or 500. Curators and conservationists can even use

  • spectroscopy to ID a paint’s chemical fingerprint and determine whether it was actually from

  • the same time as the artist who supposedly painted it.

  • Alright, now let's talk about directions. There used to be these crazy things that we

  • would print on thinly sliced trees called maps. THey were basically like a physical

  • representation of Google Maps, except, in fact, that's WHY Good Maps are CALLED Google

  • Maps. But they were huge, even bigger than the iPhone 6 Plus!

  • Right, so this is the world that Alice Ramsay lived in in 1909, when she and her 3 friends

  • decided to cross the country to prove that women were perfectly capable of driving. They

  • didn’t have the benefit of an atlas, but instead just had a bunch of like, local maps

  • -- none of which had standardized measures and many of which had inaccuracies. But they

  • made it! From Manhattan to San Francisco driving 3800 miles, only 152 of which were paved,

  • in just 59 days! It was a remarkable feat at the time. You might say that it PAVED the

  • way for future road trips. Meredith! What did I tell you about puns?

  • Even opening cans used to be extremely complicated. Like the technology for canning food has existed

  • since Napoleon’s time, when he ran a contest to help store foods for his army. But OPENING

  • a can, that's a while different ball of wax. Actually, it's a whole different can of soup.

  • It took nearly 50 years before Ezra Warner of Connecticut came up with a can opener.

  • And even then, they were inconvenient things that never left the grocery store. So instead

  • of using your hammer to crack open your food at home, you’d simply open your cans at

  • the store before leaving.

  • Now that the weather's nicer, you may have forgotten that you spent 6 months of the last

  • year shoveling snow. At least if you were me. Many cities have embedded their sidewalks

  • with coils that use electricity and hot water, or geothermal heat to stay snow-free. And

  • the systems offer a green alternative to salting and they efficiently keep walks and driveways

  • clear. I need one of those desperately. Meanwhile, here in Indianapolis, we have exactly one

  • snow plow, which was built in 1907 and then Alice Ramsey drove it from New York to Indianapolis.

  • Speaking of weather, you know what's pretty recent?Knowing what the weather will be in

  • 24 hours. The first report, with somewhat scientific predictions of the weather, was

  • made in 1861 by a British naval officer named Robert FitzRoy after a clipper carrying 450

  • people got wrecked in a storm. So FitzRoy cleverly asked fellow officers to telegraph

  • the weather where they were to him, and he created a little map to forecast the weather.

  • Of course, the predictions weren’t nearly as sophisticated as anything on your iPhone.

  • The first report included lines like: “North-- moderate westerly wind; fine. South-- fresh

  • westerly, fine.” What's FitzRoy, of course, couldn't predict was North West -- who I forecast

  • to have fresh and fine fashion sense for a baby.

  • Back in the 1820s, if a restaurant wanted ice, they’d have to import it from a New

  • England ice farm -- where laborers would saw giant 300 lb cubes of ice from frozen ponds,

  • and then use horses to drag the blocks to ships that delivered the ice around the country.

  • I know this is going to come as a terrible surprise to the people of Maine, but while

  • you guys are still up there working at your ice farms we have like, ice in our fridges now!

  • Burnt popcorn used to ruin the whole bag. But thanks to a popcorn app that listens to

  • the popping sounds coming from your microwave, and then reveals the perfect time to pull

  • the bag out, home movie snacking has effectively been saved forever.

  • But of course there are many inventions currently trying to solve problems of the palette. MIT’s

  • intelligent spoon, for instance, willtasteyour cooking and offer up suggestions for

  • improving it as you cook -- whether it’s by adding a little more salt to brine your

  • pickles perfectly, or adjusting the butter in your cookie dough.

  • While autocorrect has the occasional effect of changing your text’s meaning, at least

  • your spelling is always ducking accurate. I never mean ducking, iPhone. I have NEVER

  • meant ducking. But anyway, back in the days of typewriters, getting rid of a little text

  • error was no easy task. Because White-Out and correction tape didn’t work well on

  • onion skin -- the thin paper regularly used for making carbon copies -- typists and writers

  • had to put their elbows to work using a typewriter eraser, this really abrasive stick with bristles

  • on the end that helped brush away the inky debris made from cleaning away a mistake.

  • And finally, I return to my salon to tell you that a good night’s sleep has gotten

  • a little easier thanks to things like white noise machines and sleep number mattresses.

  • Just consider how beds have changed over they years. Like a plush mattress in 19th century

  • England? It was stuffed with like straw, and hair, and corn husks, and disease. The Ancient

  • Chinese used wood and metal pillows. And the Egyptians kept their heads elevated on stones,

  • so insects couldn’t crawl up their nostrils. What do we use now to keep insects from crawling

  • up our nostrils? Maybe that's what those sleep numbers are for.

  • Anyway, thanks for watching this episode of Mental Floss on YouTube, which was made with

  • the help of all of these nice people. And also thanks to our friends at Intel, whose

  • innovative technology is bringing a smarter future into your world right now! To find

  • out What's Next from Intel, check out their innovation hub. We've put some links below.

  • Thanks to them, thanks to you for watching, and thanks to those ridiculous people who

  • made that popcorn app.

Hi, I’m John Green. Welcome to my salon. This is Mental Floss on YouTube, and did you

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